by Kyle Vauss
The neeve jerked its head and tried to pull Gabber to the ground. Gabber leaned forward and almost fell, but then held onto a rock to his side, forcing himself to stay up. I realized that he’d remembered my advice about keeping on his feet.
I reached the neeve, drew my sword and tensed my arm. The creature tried to wrench Gabber away from the rock.
“What are you waiting for? Hit it,” said Gabber.
I sliced out with my blade, catching the neeve in the throat. Blood spurted from the cut across its grey skin.
Four arrows zipped by me. Three thudded into the ground, but Gabber screamed out as one struck his arm. He held it and pulled, crying out as he wrenched it free from his arm. That was a stupid thing to do, I knew. He was lucky that the arrow hadn’t caught a vein. Otherwise, the ground would have been showered with goblin blood.
With the neeve stumbling in pain, we summoned the last of our energy and sprinted. I was resigned to draining my stamina bar now, since I knew I didn’t have a choice. The mountain loomed closer, the marker becoming large enough to fill a quarter of my map screen.
Finally, we reached it. The mountain reached up so high that it seemed to blot out the sky. It was an inhospitable chunk of rock. Steep and jagged, with just a solitary unwelcoming path cut through it and winding its way up. There was no chance we were taking that route. Even if I had the stamina for the climb, I knew that high-level creatures awaited us.
Crawford and the neeves were closing in now. We didn’t have long. I brought up my map, checked the custom marker, and looked around. According to the map, we were stood right over the marker, which meant the cavern entrance was here. But where?
Then I saw it. The entrance to Ulrip Caverns was cut into the base of the mountain. Unless you were looking for it, you could walk straight by and have no idea it was there.
We ran over and stood near it. I had been prepared for a descent after speaking to Loria, but this was a shock to me.
The entrance wasn’t just a slope. It was more of a plummet, a dark, vertical passageway that would take us deep beneath the mountains. If the top of the mountain was dangerous, then what about this? It was hardly going to be filled with party balloons and jelly.
“We’re going down there?” said Gabber.
“Crawford won’t follow us,” I said. “Unless he has a marker for the caverns, he won’t even see the entrance. He’ll think we’ve gone up the mountain.”
“Then we better high-tail it before he sees.”
Gabber was right. We had to go. Once we jumped down into the caverns, though, I was committed. There would be no way to walk away without risking a respawn, which would ruin my character’s resale value. The only other way out was to journey through it to the end.
I could have walked away. That would have solved everything for me. After all, was it worth all this trouble just to get back at Crawford and teach him a lesson?
It wasn’t just that, though. I looked at Gabber and I felt sorry for him. I knew that the grin he always wore wasn’t so deep. Sometimes it was genuine, but other times, it was just painted there. A mask to hide his sorrow for what his brother and his clan did to him.
I couldn’t just abandon him. He wasn’t like me. He was an NPC, and if Crawford killed him he wouldn't respawn. I couldn’t stand the thought of such an intelligent goblin, even if he was just code, hanging on the hunter’s belt.
“Try and roll when you hit the bottom,” I told Gabber. “It’ll take off some of the damage.”
And with that, I jumped down into the cavern.
Chapter Sixteen
As I fell into the darkness, I began to get a strange feeling. The air whipped at my face, and my legs felt like they were turning to jelly. My body tensed out of instinct, but I tried to relax. As I hurtled twenty feet into the pitch black, with no idea what waited for me below, I had the weirdest feeling.
I wondered if this had been a good idea.
Then I felt a crunch as the ground hit me. A stinging ran up my ankles. Once again, I was thankful I wasn’t in a full immersion capsule. Some people, I knew, went into the capsules and turned their pain sensors up to the max. Others even jailbroke them. They bypassed government safety regulations and forced their capsules to deliver masochistic levels of agony. I had never understood why.
I brought up my character screen. The descent had been brief, and the time spent falling had done nothing to increase my stamina. My HP bar had dropped to just three quarters full. It wasn’t quite time to panic; I still had most of it left.
Something smashed into me in the darkness, hitting me at such a speed that I collapsed onto the floor. I smelled a familiar aroma. One that I’d begun to know all too well. Then, when the mystery objected squirmed and groaned, I knew that Gabber handed landed on top of me. This time, my health bar hovered just above halfway.
I stood up. “You okay?” I said.
“I’m not peachy,” answered Gabber. “I could use a rest.”
“Not just yet. I doubt Crawford’s gonna want to come down here. He’s not the type for long journeys. He’ll try and think of a way to use his money. God knows how, but he’ll think of something. We can’t hang around.”
“Did he even see us fall?”
“I doubt it. But if he looks around the mountain, he could get an alert telling him he’s discovered the cavern. Come on, let’s go.”
Our entry to the caverns had been in darkness. When we were actually down there, there was some light. Pale rays snaked in through crevices, fighting against the darkness but ultimately, losing.
“Do you have any torches?” I asked Gabber.
He reached into his inventory bag and pulled something out. I heard a clicking sound, and then a torch lit up. “It’s almost spent,” said Gabber, holding the light up. “It won’t last long.”
As we walked through the caverns, I got the sense that someone had been here before us. Not recently, but in years gone by. Most of the cavern consisted of wide spaces. Gabber’s high-pitched songs echoed toward the ceiling, and I had to tell him to knock it off. Every so often, we’d come to tunnels that were so cramped that we had to walk in single file.
I’d never been one for tight spaces. There was something about the lack of an escape route. The feeling that if something happened, I’d be stuck. I wasn’t scared of them. It was more of an instinctual caution.
Gabber’s torch flickered and cast weak light against the walls. “Not long until it goes out now,” he said.
With the light illuminating the area around us, I saw that the walls of the cavern were black. To our right, glowing veins ran across the walls, going in a spiral and becoming thinner the deeper they went. They looked like the age-rings you’d find if you cut open a tree.
I knew I could cast Glowing Lights, but that was a cantrip, and I wouldn’t be able to use it again for a while. I wished that I’d known we were going underground for such a long time. I’d have stocked up.
Still, if we kept a look out, we’d come across torches. The game devs wanted to make things fun. They would have left torches in barrels, or scattered around somewhere waiting for players to find them. Infarna was about entertainment, and there was nothing fun about stumbling in the dark.
As I looked to my left and saw Gabber’s torch glow against the stone walls, I stopped.
“Is that a drawing?” I said.
Gabber held his torch higher. Even fully stretched, he could only get it as high as my chest. I took it from him and held it up.
“So it is,” said Gabber, looking. “I mean, not a very good drawing, but still.”
It was a crude drawing in charcoal. It showed a creature with a bulbous head and a wide, bloated throat. A long, forked tongue stuck out of its mouth. Whatever the creature was, I didn’t want to meet it.
“You should contact the girl from the forest,” said Gabber.
“You heard me talking to her?”
“I told you, I watched you for a while.”
“Nah,” I
said. “It’s bad enough travelling with you. I don’t need anyone else.”
“I had a girl, you know,” said Gabber.
“You found someone who could put up with your smell?”
“Father arranged it. She was the daughter of a chieftain in a clan a few miles east of ours. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea at first. But we met a few times and I got to know her, and we became pals. Who knows, maybe that friendship could have gone somewhere else.”
“And now?” I asked.
He looked down at the ground. “She’s with Fengr. My brother took my clan, my chieftainship and my girl.”
I heard something ahead of us. It sounded like raindrops falling from the dewy cavern roof. A part of me thought it might have been something else. I’d stocked up on healing potions before meeting Gabber again. I opened my inventory and rearranged the potions, putting two in my quick-access slots.
“We really ought to find a potion you can use,” I said.
Gabber shrugged. “Easier said than done. There’s not a lot you can give to a goblin, and few people are good enough at potion-making to brew something. We’re not the most popular species.”
As we walked forward through the tunnels, I started to hear the sounds more often. They became less like the patter of water, and more like feet scuttling across the floor. My heart began to pound. Something was down here with us, I was sure of it.
When we walked another ten feet, I stopped. My skin began to tingle. There was something around us. Something in the shadows, watching us. When we moved, the pattering sounds stalked us. When we halted, the noises stopped. We were being followed.
There was nothing for it. Glowing Lights was a low-level cantrip, so it wouldn’t take a full day to recharge, but it would still take a while. Now was as good a time as any to use it. I accessed my cantrip list and cast Glowing Lights. A heat began to cover my hands, and then a light developed in my palm. I held my hands up and sent four gleaming balls of light out around us, filling the cavern with pale light.
“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” said Gabber, and stopped.
I looked around, and I saw what he meant. My pulse began to thud.
Surrounding us, skulking in the shadows, were creatures. They had curved backs that looked packed with muscle. When they saw me looking at them, they started to creep out of the darkness. Some of them walked on two legs, others on four. Their ears were almost as large as their heads, but their eyes were closed. Either that, or they didn’t have eyes. I guessed that creatures who lived in darkness had no use for sight. Their faces were long, as though they had been stretched out. When one opened its mouth, I saw four rows of black teeth.
“It’s not a welcome party, I can tell you that much,” said Gabber.
“Get your dagger out. Remember what I said– don’t let them pin you to the ground.”
As the creatures advanced on us, I knew we’d have to fight. I looked at them, trying to pinpoint a weakness. With nothing obvious physically, I guessed their weakness would be their lack of sight. The only saving grace was that since there were five of them, it meant they were low-level NPCs. The tougher creatures, the elite monsters of Infarna, moved alone or in pairs.
I moved closer to Gabber. “Try and keep quiet,” I told him. “They can’t see us, but they’ll react to our footsteps. We can try and sneak by.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s gonna work this time, Tamos.”
He was right. No sooner had he spoken, then one of the creatures leapt out of the shadows and landed in front of us. It twisted its head from side to side as if fixing on our location. It opened its mouth and made a series of sounds. They seemed almost like sonic beeps.
“They’re using sonar,” I said. “It must be how they find their way.”
I pulled a health potion out and drained it, restoring my HP. I held the empty jar and flung it across the cavern, where it smashed into pieces. Two of the creatures scuttled over to it, following the sound.
The creature in front of us wasn’t to be deterred. I looked at one of my glowing lights and willed it to move. The white ball drifted over the creature in front of us, revealing a text display above its head.
[Forgotten One – Level 5]
I pulled my sword from my sheath. The sound attracted the beast, who turned its head to follow it. Without warning, it leapt toward me, arms outstretched to show three-inch-long claws.
I stepped to my side, but I was too late to avoid it, and I felt a pain on my arm as its claws scratched through my clothes. I swung with my sword but missed, and the creature darted around me.
I spun around. I heard Gabber cry out to my side. I glanced and saw that two of them were approaching him.
“Use defensive parries,” I said. “Don’t let them hit you full on. If you see an opening then use it, but don’t take damage. I’m not carrying you through the cave.”
The creature behind me leaned back on its hind legs and got ready to pounce. As it leapt, I gripped my sword. My heart hammered, but I held my ground and waited. Just as it reached me, I thrust out with my sword, piercing its belly. The creature cried out, and the other forgotten ones to my right answered with calls of their own.
With one forgotten creature dead, I moved over to Gabber so that we stood back to back. The monsters leapt at us in turn, one after another, and we defended against their attacks. Then, Gabber put his dagger away.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
Gabber started to make sounds. It wasn’t a language I’d ever heard, but I realized he must have been using his animal tamer skill. It seemed ludicrous at first, but I watched as one of the creatures stopped just before leaping, and then backed away.
The other wasn’t to be deterred so easily. It jumped forward and scratched Gabber across the face. I swung out with my sword, catching it on the waist. The fourth forgotten one crept out from the shadows now and came to my right. It was trying to catch us in a pincer movement.
“Get your dagger out,” I said.
As the two untamed creatures pounced, we struck back. Although Gabber’s attacks were fast, I knew they would do little damage. I heard him shout out in pain as one of them slashed him. I swung my sword every time the creatures got within distance. They shrieked in pain when my blade connected with their flesh.
The little stamina I’d regenerated began to drain. I was lost in the heat of battle. I struck out wildly, slashing at everything that moved. Soon my attacks slowed, and my damage lessened. My arms felt heavy, and I realized that I was running on fumes.
The last creature tried to hit Gabber, but its health was too low, and one final plunge of the goblin’s dagger killed it.
I stopped and took a breath. “That did it,” I said.
There was just one creature now, but it was the one Gabber had tamed.
“Think we can use it to stop any other creatures attacking us? There are bound to be more.”
I got my answer when I heard a series of throaty rasps come from the shadows. I realized that more of the monsters were coming for us.
Summoning the last dregs of my energy, I stood back to back with Gabber as the beasts approached. The next few minutes were lost in a series of scratches from the creatures’ claws, and my own counter strikes with my sword. I swung it at anything that moved. I sucked in air as I felt my body tire.
The cave filled with shrieks of pain. I heard Gabber cry out as one of them hit him, and my leg stung with pain when another latched onto to me. We kept fighting, my sword slashing flesh, Gabber’s dagger piercing skin, until finally, the cave was silent. When the battle was over, text flooded my screen.
[Level up to Level 4!]
[Level up to Level 5]
[Ability gained -Dark Magic]
- The shadow walker can harness the darkness of the shadows and cast a spell that blinds those it touches.
I knew dark magic came at level 5, and I’d been looking forward to getting it. A shadow walker wa
s tougher than a thief or other classes who used stealth, but it was not a warrior build. Dark Magic would give me an advantage in battle, letting me temporarily blind my enemies. I couldn’t wait to try it.
All the same, I wondered why I hadn’t found myself back in the white-walled room after levelling up.
Levelling up twice during the battle gave me a defence bonus against the forgotten ones, as well as granting me a .5x improvement in detecting them. I had the feeling this particular boost would be invaluable in the cave, since there was a chance it could help guard against sneak attacks.
Gabber walked toward his tamed creature, taking wary steps as if he expected it to attack him. When he reached it, the creature shrieked. I saw that its health bar began to drain, until finally, it died.
